Darren ALMONDAZUMATEI Jun
Yeondoo JUNG
KAGABU Shiho
KUNIYASU Takamasa
Nalini MALANINAKAZAWA Hideaki
SHIGA LiekoJanuary 23 (Wed.) to April 1 (Mon.), 2013
The National Art Center, Tokyo Special Exhibition Gallery 2E
Organized by The National Art Center, 106-8558 Tokyo
7-22-2 Roppongi, Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan
TEL: (+81) 3-5777-8600 (Hello Dial) URL: http://www.nact.jp/

Closed on Tuesdays
Opening hours: 10:00-18:00 (Fridays 10:00-20:00)
Open until 22:00 on March 23 (Sat.) in conjunction with “Roppngi Art Night 2013”
Last admission: 30 minutes before closingYeondoo JUNG, Wonderland – ‘Snow White’, 2004
© Yeondoo JungOutline

Admission (tax included)

AdultsCollege students

The Artist File is an ongoing series of contemporary art exhibitions that was launched

General Tickets

1,000500

when the National Art Center, Tokyo first opened. Artists are not chosen to fit in with

Advance Tickets

800

300

any particular theme, rather they are selected from both Japan and abroad on the basis

Group Tickets

800

300of interest and relevance, and their work is presented as a group of small solo shows in
the exhibition space.
This exhibition, the fifth in the series, features eight artists including three from overseas.
They are a diverse group both in terms of age (ranging from those in their 30s to their60s) and in terms of media, including painting, photography, video, and installation.
What ties them together is their dedication to their work, their will to earnestly
confront social and personal issues, and their drive to explore the limitless possibilities ofartistic expression. We sincerely hope that this exhibition will provide not only exciting
encounters with the latest in contemporary art, but also an opportunity to turn a tranquil
gaze upon the complex and fascinating world we live in today.

SHIGA Lieko, RASENKAIGAN, 2010

*Admission is free for high school students and those under 18,
as well as those with physical disability certificates and one
accompanying person.
*Free admission on March 23 (Sat.) in conjunction with “Roppongi
Art Night 2013”.
*Group tickets are available only at the venue (discounts only
applicable to groups of 20 or more).
*General and advance tickets may also be purchased through Ticket
Pia (P-code:765-342) and Lawson Ticket (L-code:37648).
*Advance tickets can be available until January 22 (Tue.), but at thevenue until January 21 (Mon).
*Visitors who present a ticket or ticket stub from another special
exhibition currently underway at the National Art Center, Tokyo,
the Suntory Museum or the Mori Art Museum (the three facilities
that make up the Roppongi Art Triangle) will be eligible for thediscounted group rate.

Exhibition Highlights

Related programs| Artist File

Artist Talks

This year’s exhibition is the fifth in the Artist File series, which was launched in2008. Artist File is an ongoing project that aims to satisfy one of the NACT’s primaryobjectives: to introduce the public to new currents in contemporary art. In each event,several artists are selected from among those recommended by the NACT’s curators,
and their work presented in the form of a series of solo shows within the exhibition
space so as to provide a well-rounded, in-depth portrait of art today.
| Dynamic presentation of diverse creative endeavors
The artists were not selected according to a particular theme. This allows the project tobring together the widest possible range of innovative and intriguing artists working
in various fields. An expansive 2,000-square-meter exhibition space with eight-meter
ceilings is partitioned into independent zones, which individual artists transform into
their own worlds. As in previous years, this year’s exhibition features art in a wide
range of media, from painting to photography, video and large-scale installation, with

Jan. 24 (Thu.) 14:00 -15:30 Darren ALMOND
Jan. 25 (Fri.) 17:30-19:00 Yeondoo JUNG
Jan. 27 (Sun.) 13:30-15:00 Nalini MALANI
15:30-17:00 AZUMATEI Jun
Feb. 16 (Sat.) 14:00-15:30 KUNIYASU Takamasa
Mar. 2 (Sat.) 14:00-15:30 NAKAZAWA Hideaki
Mar. 9 (Sat.)

14:00-15:30 KAGABU ShihoWorkshops
Feb. 24 (Sun.) SHIGA Lieko
Mar. 23 (Sat.) KUNIYASU Takamasa
Performance
Mar. 23 (Sat.) KAGABU Shiho*Times and content of events are subject to change.
For details and information on related events, please visit
our website: http://www.nact.jp

each of the eight artists showcased both thoughtfully and dynamically.
| A multi-national, multi-generational selection of artists
No limits are imposed on age or nationality. This year’s Artist File exhibition features
five Japanese artists and three artists hailing from the U.K., India and South Korea,respectively. The group is diverse in age as well, ranging from their 30s to their 60s.
The goal is to showcase both work by young, up-and-coming creators and new
directions being taken by established artists who have long careers but have had a few
opportunity to present their work at a major show at Japanese museums.
| A wealth of new work on viewOf the eight artists featured, six are exhibiting new work. Azumatei Jun, Kagabu
Shiho and Kuniyasu Takamasa present large-scale installations, which capitalize onthe massive scale of the venue. Painter Nakazawa Hideaki has created dozens of new
paintings for the show. Shiga Lieko’s new photographs were just exhibited for the firsttime in Sendai in November 2012, and Nalini Malani’s video installation recently madewaves at Documenta 13.
| Artists’ work and information exhaustively archived“Artist File” is not merely the title of the exhibition. One of the project’s primary aims
is literally to create files containing information on the featured artists. The Artist Fileexhibition catalog consists of eight volumes, one on each artist, containing color plates
along with detailed biographies, bibliographies, and critical essays. An illustrated recordof the exhibition will also be assembled while it is on view (to be sold separately). Inaddition, NACT will continue to amass information on each artist in the future, adding
to an archive that already contains resources on 40 artists.

Access*Tokyo Metro Chiyoda Line, Nogizaka Station (C05), Exit 6 isdirectly linked to the Center*Tokyo Metro Hibiya Line, Roppongi Station (H04), 5-minute
walk from Exit 4a*Toei Oedo Subway Line, Roppongi Station (E23), 4-minute
walk from Exit 7

Darren ALMOND
Born in 1971 in Wigan, EnglandLives and works in London

One of the most prominent artists in the U.K. today, Darren Almondmade a splash as the youngest artist in the Sensation group show of1997, which might be seen as the zenith of the iconoclastic YBAs (YoungBritish Artists) who took that nation by storm in the 1990s. Since thenhe has been highly active both in Britain and internationally, showing invenues such as the Venice Biennale (2003) and the Tate Triennial (2009).
Executed in a wide range of media, including photography, sculpture andvideo, Almond’s work, dealing with time, memory, and travel, overflows
with a lyrical and contemplative beauty. In this exhibition, his video piece
If I Had You (2005), which was shortlisted for the Turner Prize, will beshown along with his Fullmoons series of visionary photographs shot innumerous locations worldwide.

Darren ALMOND, Fullmoon@Eifel 2, 2002
Courtesy of Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin / Darren Almond

AZUMATEI Jun
Born in 1973 in Tokyo
Lives and works in Basel, Switzerland

Azumatei Jun weaves myriad aspects of the intersections and divisions
between “recording” and “remembering” into works of art that
communicate a singular vision. He layers acrylic paint and varnish atop
photographs and buffs them to a fine polish with sandpaper, producing
distinctive multimedia paintings in which natural phenomena like skies
and clouds that presumably were captured clearly by the camera aretransformed into gorgeous yet impalpable phantoms. Since moving toEurope in 2009, Azumatei has been painting on old sheets stretchedover wooden frames with varnish applied, producing innovative texturaleffects. The varnish soaks into the sheets, producing ghostly patterns
and rendering the sheets translucent so that the eye is led to thewooden frame and the wall visible through them. These paintings are
simultaneously flat and multi-layered, implying a temporal dimension inwhich we can seemingly trace the memories of the unknown person towhom the sheets once belonged. For this exhibition, he has created an
installation that presents his new paintings in a unique format.

AZUMATEI Jun
Right: Sad but True, 2011
Left: Sad but True, 2011
© Jun Azumatei / courtesy of AB Gallery

Yeondoo JUNG
Born in 1969 in Jinju, South Korea
Lives and works in Seoul, South Korea

Highly active on the international scene, with past exhibitions including
the Venice Biennale (2005) and the Taipei Biennial (2006), Yeondoo JUNG
is one of South Korea’s foremost contemporary artists. Created without
using computer graphics, his unique photographs and videos depict anentirely new reality, a fantasy realm at the crossroads of the real and thefictional. Yeondoo’s working method always entails communication withothers, and the results shed a warm light on the dreams and humble
day-to-day existence of ordinary people. For the Artist File exhibition, hepresents his Wonderland series of staged photographs based on children’sdrawings and his Handmade Memories, a video work reinterpreting
episodes related by elderly people from South Korea.

Yeondoo JUNG
Wonderland –‘Afternoon Nap’
2004
© Yeondoo Jung

KAGABU Shiho
Born in 1981 in Kanagawa Prefecture
Lives and works in Kanagawa Prefecture

KAGABU Shiho, indicators, 2011
Photo by Hayato Wakabayashi

Kagabu Shiho creates installations using almost any kind of material
available to her, including found scraps, store-bought items, on-siteobjects, video images, drawings, and words. The places where she shows
her works are also highly varied and include museums, galleries, houses,
vacant shops, and factories. By forming a link between the materials
and in turn with the place, Kagabu realizes a tension-filled, temporaryspace. In some cases, she also adds her own body to the work to createa performance. In this way, Kagabu deconstructs or restructures therelationships that bind to the world, which are attempts to capture a real
sense of the present.

KUNIYASU Takamasa
Born in 1957 in Hokkaido Prefecture
Lives and works in Ibaraki Prefecture

Kuniyasu Takamasa’s earliest works consisted of regular modular units,
but in the mid-’80s he began fabricating massive structures out ofceramic blocks and logs. These were neither detached sculptures norinstallations consisting of multiple works. Rather, they were constructions
that seemed to sprout organically from interior spaces, buildings orfeatures of the natural terrain and self-reproduce, the strange fruits ofKuniyasu’s unique methodology. In recent years, he has primarily focusedon site-specific outdoor works, so it will be intriguing to see what hecreates in an indoor venue – especially when that venue is The National
Art Center, Tokyo.

KUNIYASU Takamasa
Spiral of MIDOU, 1997
Photo by Takamasa Kuniyasu

Nalini MALANI
Born in 1946 in Karachi (then part of India, now in Pakistan)
Lives and works in Mumbai/Bombay, India

Building up innumerable layers of fragmentary images into dreamlike
and allegorical pictures and videos, Nalini Malani is one of India’s bestknown contemporary artists. While Malani’s work can be interpreted
as a series of phantasmagorical tales steeped in exoticism, they are also
charged with her critiques of the violence, repression and contradictionthat plague contemporary society, and there are numerous possible
interpretations open to the viewer. After starting her career as a painter,she began to work with video, installation and performance in the 1990s,
and has remained a highly active force not only in India but also on theinternational art scene. This exhibition features her paintings as well as a
new video installation that was shown at Documenta 13 (2012).

Nalini MALANI
Splitting the Other (Panelno.14 of fourteen panel
painting environment)
2007
Courtesy of the artist

NAKAZAWA Hideaki
Born in 1955 in Niigata Prefecture
Lives and works in Gifu Prefecture

Having studied oil painting techniques and materials at Tokyo Universityof the Arts, Nakazawa Hideaki consistently employs a painstaking
tempera painting process. In recent years, he has produced a long seriesof mug-shot-like portraits of children on standard-sized canvases withmonochromatic backgrounds. These are very realistically rendered, yetthe children wear expressions somehow disconnected from reality, andwhile they may appear charming at first, an icy and even poisonous
miasma pervades the pictures. Nakazawa’s paintings combining oil paintand tempera feature a highly distinctive surface, which appears to be an
indispensable element of his working process.

SHIGA Lieko
Born in 1980 in Aichi Prefecture
Lives and works in Miyagi Prefecture

The photography of Shiga Lieko, who drew widespread attention withher 2007 photo book Canary, possesses a stunning power that upends
the viewer’s expectations. For Shiga, taking photographs is a ritualistic
act that lays bare the very roots of human existence, riddled with
contradictions and conflict between the body, fated for death, and themind that longs for life. In producing images, she thoroughly researches
the locations for her photographs and seems to make them one with her
own flesh and blood. In the process of distorting and destroying images
and then weaving them back together again, she poses fundamental
questions about the meaning of human life. Shiga studied in London
and has worked in numerous locations worldwide. Since 2009, she has
lived in the Kitakama district of Natori, Miyagi Prefecture, which suffereddamage in the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 2011. Her photos
in this exhibition, the first new work she has shown in four years, wereshot in the city.

NAKAZAWA Hideaki, Face of a Child – Buddist Priest, 2006
Photo: Sakae Fukuoka

SHIGA Lieko, RASENKAIGAN, 2010
© Lieko ShigaList of Image Data for Press Use
ARTIST FILE 2013
The NACT Annual Show of Contemporary Art
We are pleased to offer a number of different images of the works on display to help
promote the exhibition. If you would like to receive one (or more), please fill out theattached form and return it to us by fax (e-mail requests will also be honored).
Please refrain from using the images included in the press release without prior permission.

Number1

Image

Photo Credit

Darren ALMOND
Fullmoon@Eifel 2
2002 Type-C print
Courtesy of Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin / Darren Almond

2

AZUMATEI Jun
Right: Sad but True
2011 Used sheet, water varnish, poppy oil, acrylic, and wooden frame

Left: Sad but True
2011 Gold thumbtacks on the wall© Jun Azumatei / courtesy of AB Gallery

3

Yeondoo JUNG
Wonderland – ‘Snow White’2004 Type-C print© Yeondoo Jung

4

KAGABU Shihoindicators
2011 Redundant objects (originally cookware for school lunch),stainless steel, aluminum ware, helium gas, etc.
Photo by Hayato Wakabayashi

5

KUNIYASU Takamasa
Spiral of MIDOU
1997 Maritime pine and ceramic blocks
Mont-de-Marsan, France
Photo by Takamasa Kuniyasu

6

Nalini MALANI
Splitting the Other (Panel no.14 of fourteen panel paintingenvironment)
2007 Acrylic, ink, and enamel reverse painting on acrylic sheet
Courtesy of the artist

7

NAKAZAWA Hideaki
Face of a Child – Buddist Priest
2006 Tempera, oil, chalk ground, cotton, and wood panel
Photo: Sakae Fukuoka

8

SHIGA Lieko
RASENKAIGAN
2010 Type-C print© Lieko Shiga

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for Press Use
ARTIST FILE 2013
The NACT Annual Show of Contemporary Art

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For inquiries or more information, please contact:
ISHIMATSU Keiko, KUBOTA Chie, KIRYU Chieko
Public Relations Division
The National Art Center, Tokyo
Tel. 03-6812-9925 Fax. 03-3405-2532 E-mail pr@nact.jp